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The Committee on Social Theory wants to invite everyone back for the 2016-2017 academic school year!

The fall meeting will feature introductions and information about this years upcoming events, including the Fall Distinguished Speaker, Dr. Elizabeth Shove. There will also be plenty of time for conversation and Q&A over a provided lunch.

March 25th, Richard Wolff, Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Visiting Professor, Graduate Program in International Affairs, The New School. Lecture will be held in the Young Library Auditorium, William T. Young Library. Reception to follow at 5:30 p.m. in the Gaines Center Commonwealth House.

The Committee on Social Theory is excited to announce the first lecturer of the Spring Lecture Series, Lori Watson. Lori Watson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and director of the Gender Studies Program, University of San Diego. Dr. Watson's lecture will address "Sex Equality and Public Reason." Reception to follow at 5:30 p.m. in the Gaines Center Commonwealth House.

The Committee on Social Theory at The University of Kentucky is hosting Professor Mahmood Mamdani as its Fall Distinguished Speaker. On October 2, Dr. Mamdani will give a talk entitled “Political Violence and Political Justice: A Critique of Criminal Justice as Accountability.” The talk will take place at 3:30 pm in the W.T. Young Library Auditorium.

Dr. Mamdani is a Professor of Anthropology, Political Science and African Studies at Columbia University. He is also the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at Columbia University’s School of Internal Affairs. Additionally, he is the Director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research in Kampala, Uganda.

A native of Uganda, Dr. Mamdani was awarded one of 26 scholarships to study in the United States when Uganda won its independence. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, Mamdani joined the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He earned a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1972. While conducting dissertation research in Uganda he was expelled by Idi Amin. After the overthrow of Amin, Mamdani returned to Uganda, but his citizenship was eventually revoked as a result of his scholarship’s criticism of the government. During his career Mamdani has been visiting professor at the University of Michigan, University of Durban-Westville, the Nuhru Memorial Museum and Library, and Princeton University. He was also the inaugural chair of African studies at the University of Cape Town.

Professor Mamdani’s current work explores the intersection between politics and culture, a comparative study of colonialism since 1452, the history of civil war and genocide in Africa, the Cold War and the War on Terror, and the history and theory of human rights. His most recent book, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror (2009), investigates how conflict in Darfur began as a civil war and transformed into a War on Terror.

Justice has been a reference point for radical and critical geographers for more than 40 years. Geographers’ engagements with issues of justice, however, have always been defined by wariness toward political philosophies of justice. These are variously considered too liberal, too distributive in their orientation, or too universalizing. The wariness, in short, indicates the parameters that define the prevalent spatial imaginary of radical and critical human geography: self-consciously oppositional, concerned with the production of structural relations, sensitive to context and difference. Barnett explore two overlapping strands of contemporary political philosophy and political theory that have recently developed arguments for ‘the priority of injustice’ in the elaboration of democratic theory.

Rebecca Lane

Ph.D. Student By Rebekah Tilley
Photos by Mark Cornelison

Culture expresses itself in a myriad of familiar ways – our music, fashion, entertainment, literature. Perhaps less noted is the way that culture impacts our bodies including the very manner we are brought into the world and the food that nourishes us during gout first year of life.